06
March
2019
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00:00 AM
Europe/Amsterdam

ECE Chair Alan George Named Interim Director of Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center

Alan D. George, the Ruth and Howard Mickle Endowed Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering and department chair and professor of electrical and computer engineering at the Swanson School of Engineering, has been named the interim director of the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC).

“Alan is the perfect person to serve in this role and provide experienced leadership during this interim period,” said Rob A. Rutenbar, senior vice chancellor for research. “We owe him a huge debt of gratitude for his willingness to contribute his vast expertise in this area to the strategic and operational needs of the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center.”

George said, “Throughout my career, I have admired PSC for its pioneering achievements in high-performance computing and data analytics, and I am happy to help PSC while the search committee completes its important work in identifying the new PSC director.”

George is the founder and director of the Center for Space, High-Performance and Resilient Computing (SHREC), an NSF consortium of more than 30 partners from industry, government and academia that work collaboratively to solve research challenges. The main research focus of SHREC is “mission-critical computing,” which includes space computing, high-performance computing and data analytics and resilient computing to ensure computer dependability in harsh environments like space or the ocean floor. SHREC currently has a computer experiment on board the International Space Station, and expects a second to launch to the ISS this spring.

Established in 1986, the PSC is a joint effort between Pitt and CMU to provide university, government and industrial researchers with access to several of the most powerful systems for high-performance computing and data storage available to scientists and engineers nationwide for unclassified research. PSC advances the state of the art in high performance computing, communications and data analytics, and offers a flexible environment for solving the largest and most challenging problems in computational science.

Pitt and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) launched a nationwide search for a new PSC director in December 2018. George will serve as interim until that search is completed, which is expected to be later this year. He succeeds Nick Nystrom who is returning to his role as PSC’s senior director of research to focus on research initiatives.

Contact: Paul Kovach